Sex, Drugs & No Idea

14: What a Time to be Alive

Charlie had really and totally forgotten about the museum girl when he was roused the next morning by Hugo's foot in his ribs. His sodden memory was bereft of even the tiniest niggling trace of her. Of course, it was a rare day indeed––during this trip––that found him surfacing from the realms of sleep and remembering with any real certainty much of anything from the day or, especially, the evening before.

"Wha' you fuckin' want?" he said cordially, slapping Hugo's disgusting flipper off of him and rubbing the gunk out of his eyes.

"Are we going to the tunnels or what?"

"Wha's a time?"

"Aye?"

Charlie cleared his throat. "Time. The time. What is it?"

Hugo consulted the commoner's Rolex; his phone. "Half seven."

"In the morning?"

"Correct."

"When're we supposed to get the van to these tunnels?"

"Eight."

"Oh no, no, no. No. That's... That's not gonna happen, mate."

"You useless cunts. You knew we had to be out of here at eight."

"How're everyone else looking?" Charlie said, reaching for his cigarettes and spilling them over the floor. After soaking up culture and history until their eyes bled at the War Remnants Museum, things had progressed into another large evening.

"Dang looks like some just dug him up," Hugo replied.

"Classic. How 'bout me?"

"Hideous."

Charlie nodded. That correlated accurately with how he felt.

"What're we going to do today then?" Hugo said, moodily. "We should probably get a bit more sightseeing in, you know. Can't all be pina coladas and walks in the thingamabob, mate."

"Yeah, yeah. Don't you worry. We'll get out and see something. Just give me a couple of hours to get my head straight again. Go get some breakfast. Or resuscitate Dang."

"His wounds are beyond my skill to heal."

Charlie nodded appreciatively. "Great Lord of the Rings reference, man."

"I knew you'd like that one."

#

They ended up at the Reunification Palace––or Independence Palace. Independence Palace struck a grander, liberal note, whereas, to Charlie's untutored ear, the word 'reunification' somehow conjured images of water-boarding, solitary confinement and breaking rocks with little hammers to make recompense for fighting for the losing side.

They wandered about in a lacklustre sort of way for a while. Tourists being tourists for the sake of being tourists. Taking in this landmark so that, in the fullness of time, they could give woolly descriptions of it to apathetic friends and family when they got back home. As they walked through the once-decadent halls Charlie was reminded of a cross between a hotel and an old private school. It had a musty and mothballed feel to it.

"I can tell you right now that this place isn't going to make it into the top ten in the memory bank, boys," Hugo grumbled. "Not like that museum yesterday."

And, just like that, the girl in the museum was back in his head.

Charlie hadn't been able to get her out of his head all the previous day and it had begun to piss him off. The thing that had really driven him up the wall, as he inhaled vodka after dinner and shared in a novelty-sized joint, was the fact that he was getting pissed off at all.